No bail for ex-death row inmate charged with sex trafficking

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHERJanuary 17, 2018

FILE - This undated file booking photo released by the Honolulu Police Department shows suspect Isaiah McCoy. McCoy, a former death row inmate from Delaware who was later exonerated, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges in Hawaii. At a detention hearing Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2018, McCoy was ordered held without bail. (Honolulu Police Department via AP, File)

HONOLULU (AP) — An exonerated death row inmate from Delaware was ordered held without bail Wednesday on a sex trafficking charge in Hawaii.

Isaiah McCoy used force, threats and coercion on young women to make them participate in prostitution, U.S. prosecutors alleged. He needs to be locked up so other victims can safely come forward, Assistant U.S. Attorney Morgan Early said at Wednesday’s detention hearing in Honolulu. He’s a danger to the community and to witnesses, she said.

“The nature of the charge involves threats, it involves violence,” she said.

While McCoy is charged with one count involving one victim, prosecutors said they expect to bring additional charges.

McCoy maintains his innocence and is an advocate for criminal justice reform, his federal public defender Max Mizono said.

In 2010, McCoy was convicted of shooting a Maryland man and was sentenced to death. He spent nearly seven years in prison before being acquitted during a second trial. He then moved to Hawaii.

Over the summer, Honolulu police received complaints from women that McCoy had been “pimping” them, federal prosecutors said in court documents. McCoy “makes us have sex for money, and holds our belongings to control us,” one woman said, according to the documents.

Mizono noted that McCoy wasn’t charged with alleged actions toward the women who spoke to police and accused him of rape and beatings. If McCoy was such a danger, police should have arrested him then, Mizono said.

In September, he was arrested in connection with a Waikiki fatal shooting. McCoy wasn’t the murder suspect, but was in the same apartment as the accused killer.

McCoy’s co-defendant on the federal trafficking case is his Army soldier wife, Tawana Roberts. Her detention hearing was postponed at the request of her defense attorney.